Stock market lacks active participants

The stock market obviously lacks active participants, traders believe. The situation is developing against the background of the overall passiveness. Advance or decline in share prices are as a rule due to speculative activities. Even yesterday's price growth that had seized the entire market did not provide for trade volume's reaching even a half of the average level of a month ago.

Today was to expected to be a test for investors' confidence in the possibility of the further growth of share prices and the return to the positions reached before the "state vs. oligarchs" case. The test did not really work out. Traders are mostly careful. RAO UES opened at RUR8.69 (about $0.286), then went up to RUR8.825 (about $0.291), and almost at once dropped back to RUR8.642 (about $0.285). After this, these shares resumed advancing; by 4:00 p.m. Moscow time RAO UES went up 0.6 percent to RUR8.705 (about $0.287) on MICEX.

AvtoVAZ demonstrated very good dynamics. Over the past week, shares of the desperately lobbied flagship of the Russian automotive industry jumped over 17 percent to RUR757 (about $24.94). Today they climbed 3.6 percent. The rest blue chips underwent a correction within 1 to 1.5 percent. Much can change in the market's disposition after the Anti-Monopoly Ministry makes a decision on the YUKOS-Sibneft merger, specialists believe.

Not that long ago, American soldiers would train their skills to counter insurgent and partisan military organizations. These days, they are trained to show resistance to the regular army of a potential adversary